@blossom - I think there is something else that drives the guidance/college counselors to suggest multiple safeties. Merit money. Most of the schools in our area widely publicize how much merit money the senior class “earns” every year. Private schools use that as a marketing tool. At the end of the admissions cycle, the counselors want copies of every award letter, and they compile and publish all of those stats. Getting full rides, full tuition, and honors college acceptances seem to be more regarded than admittance to an elite. The schools sends 1-2 kids/year to the elites, but usually for sports.
There’s so much insight in your post, @bclintonk. If only it could be bottled. I wish more kids understood.
Because, in short, they’re also looking for the level of your thinking. That’s deeper than, “I want” or a string of misperceptions about what sells. Assume (or blame) at your own risk. Calling it “racket” is like stopping half way. You don’t get to just say, “Here I am, in all my hs glory. Love me…or something’s wrong with you.” Lol.
Riiiiight, lookingforward, the colleges are looking for the level of thinking displayed by bclintonk, who–I am reasonably certain–is a parent. I don’t fault a 17-year-old for thinking like a very bright and insightful 17-year-old.
Once in a while, there is a student who has a 4.0 UW GPA, 1600/2400 SAT I, 2400 SAT II (total for 3; and one sitting each of the SAT I and SAT II, not an agglomeration of multiple tests), AP National Scholar by junior year (all 5’s), multiple university courses that are post-AP, and ECs that are solid (state-level awards, some national competition, a varsity sport), but that don’t knock one’s socks off. (Not speaking of my own family). Regardless of what anyone is telling the student, this person might be “the real deal.” Based on my observations, it seems to me that admissions committees have some trouble figuring out who in this category is for real, or not.
Actually, I am not sure how many students there each year are who fit the entire description above. I am not sure that the colleges would really lose out in terms of the student community if they just took everyone in that group who applied (barring disqualifications of character–not an applicable situation in my experience). I think that some of the single-initial colleges used to do that.
Since the admissions committees sometimes seem to have difficulty telling gold from pyrite, applications may very well look like over-reaching when they are far from that. Of course, students of this type will have good to excellent back-ups. They don’t tend to be imprudent.
But in my opinion, local students’ experience with admissions committees that were less than discerning is now causing the local GC’s to advise the students (all of them) not to apply to top schools, because it will only lead to disappointment. Under-reaching is also a “thing.”
Again, the common mistake of thinking of qualitative as quantitative (or hierarchical: most 5’s, state or national awards, post-AP courses.)
" I am not sure that the colleges would really lose out in terms of the student community if they just took everyone in that group who applied."
See it? There are plenty of top performing kids who fit (match) in multiple ways. Why should a top college take students who have the bones, but can’t flesh it out? These super competitive colleges don’t…need…to.
Sure, the idividual might be the real deal. But if he can’t express it, are adcoms supposed to guess? Some so focus on individual kids they know (anecdotes,) that they miss just how may kids end up uber competitive, Fitzsimmons’s 3x the number of seats. Do you really want them to set those finalists aside for kids who may have the stats, some awards, not the other aspects the college looks for?
“Do you really want them to set those finalists aside for kids who may have the stats, some awards, not the other aspects the college looks for?”
The applicants that quantmech describes are actually the finalists, they make not get in to all the top colleges they apply to but they’ll get into a couple of the top 5 or 10.
“Once in a while, there is a student who has a 4.0 UW GPA, 1600/2400 SAT I, 2400 SAT II (total for 3; and one sitting each of the SAT I and SAT II, not an agglomeration of multiple tests), AP National Scholar by junior year (all 5’s), multiple university courses that are post-AP, and ECs that are solid (state-level awards, some national competition, a varsity sport),”
This is a very common profile of Asians in the bay area who are majoring in a STEM field, not all score 2400 or 36 but they’re over 2300. They do fine with the top colleges, they get in ED to one of the five ivies that off them, or HYP, Cal Tech, MIT, etc… The one college where they run into issues is Stanford, as it’s tougher to get in as an Asian from CA, if you’re not first gen or a recruitable athlete.
I am not thinking of top college admissions as hierarchical, but if you show me a student who has all of the objective qualifications I listed above–not just many, but every single one–I don’t think there are actually “plenty” of students in that category, even these days.
A major question for me is: does the student not have the aspects the college is looking for, or did the student just not show them explicitly, perhaps because the people around him/her were under-informed? Or maybe the student even showed them, but somehow they were overlooked or misinterpreted.
There has been an admissions office in the past that gave the impression of being actively hostile toward students with 800’s. (Maybe the admissions staffers knew a person in that category who wasn’t nice.)
I sometimes think that college admissions are not unlike the “duck drop” on the old Groucho Marx show “You Bet Your Life,” where using the right word gave the prize–now it’s giving the right impression…
Quant- you and I have had this debate before but I’ll say it again- is it a national tragedy if the kid you describe ends up at Vanderbilt and not Dartmouth, or Emory but not JHU or CMU but not MIT? You are not talking about a kid who ends up majoring in recreation management at Framingham State College; you’re talking about a kid who ends up at a top research U but maybe not the one he or she thought was their first choice???
When you’re 17 you think your life is over if you don’t get in to Columbia. But is Rice sloppy seconds- especially if you major in one of the disciplines where Rice is actually stronger than Columbia? Or Pomona vs. Williams?
In my neck of the woods (Northeast), I don’t know a single kid with the profile you describe who couldn’t walk their way into Vanderbilt, Brandeis, Emory, Reed, Pomona, Macalester, Carleton, Davidson, Wake Forest. I’m not even going near the state flagships, many of which have stronger programs than some of the privates which get a lot of love (somewhat misplaced in my opinion.)
No, I don’t think so. They may be among those who get past “first cut” at some colleges, which is several steps/filters away from finalists.
You cannot say, based on the bones, who will get into “the top 5 or 10.”
And important: these kids who do get in are not doing so based just on 4.0, 800s, 5s, DE at a high level, or major awards. It is the holistic. A lot of the kids you mention are putting out a very fine whole app and supp. They’ve done a lot through hs, of different sorts, including side interests. They can come across as quite personable, in their apps.
It is not just the elements QM offered.
QM, saying you heard of a dept with anti-800 adcoms is the kind of unsupportable bit that can mislead. It may be true, it may not be. It’s like some other non-facts people promote.
And look, your app is it. Adult strangers with the U perspective will read it and react- not your hs teachers, who know you. It includes the supp, interview and LoRs, sure. But if the elements don’t come through, adcoms do not guess. The sorts of sttributes, the kinds of energies, etc. Part is shown in the fill in the blanks, sure. A lot is in the writing.
In the past, QM, you’ve expressed sympathy for those kids who are smart, but miss the mark, even some feeling they’re somehow “robbed” of that great opp to go to H or MIT, etc.
Well, that’s how it is, somewhat Darwinian. There’s a surplus of top academic kids in those applicant pools. Not enough with the rest of the verve. But plenty to fill the seats.
I haven’t looked recently, but the College Board used to publish the numbers of kids with 800’s on all three SAT sections plus three SAT 2’s (single sitting, so no mix and matching allowed) and I was shocked by how low the numbers were.
Parents here like to finesse. Kid gets a 760/700 which then becomes “near perfect scores”. No. Kids like to finesse- how many times have we read a kid’s posting “I got 680/650 on my SAT’s but based on my last practice test I know I’m going to score 760 on both next time”. No.
The actual number of perfect scores is a relatively small number, and the actual number of “near perfect academics” by your measurement is also a small number. So if once a year, Harvard, MIT, Cal Tech, U Chicago, Yale and Princeton each mess up by not admitting one or two of these perfect candidates, and those kids end up at Northwestern, Penn, CMU, Harvey Mudd and U Michigan, I think we can all agree the system is working reasonably well.
“So if once a year, Harvard, MIT, Cal Tech, U Chicago, Yale and Princeton each mess up by not admitting one or two of these perfect candidates,”
These kids do get into those schools at least from the bay area, northeast may be different, I defer to folks in that part of the country who have better local info. They don’t get into all of them, but do get into a couple. Again, MIT and Cal Tech, maybe Chicago as well don’t look as heavily into race, first gen as HYPS does, so the objective stats, good ECs and a national award is sufficient.
“But if the elements don’t come through, adcoms do not guess.”
Well they definitely guess if they’re reading an athlete or development admit. These essays just have to be basic (no spelling or grammatical errors) and they’re in. Given what’s happening with tutors writing papers for athletes (even at schools considered good academically), I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that their admission essays were not ones with critical thinking, depth, analysis, uniqueness adcoms say they want.
“There’s a surplus of top academic kids in those applicant pools.”
Given this, wouldn’t it make more sense to be a bottom academic kid, you know an alphabet-soup transcript like mine, surely I’d be competing with only a handful of other kids and not all those pesky 1500/1600 applicants.
At none of the tippy top holistics is “objective stats, good ECs, and a national award” sufficient for an admit.
It’s holistic. It’s about the kid who comes through in his presentation, which includes the record, yes. And then the rest of it.
I think some must not ralize how many 4.0, top scores, good ECs, DE kids there are. Many with relevant experiences in their fields, days and days of them. Some act as if a top peformer makes adcoms go gaga, like they rarely see them.
And I’ve read those CA apps from all sots of kids and of course some kids, the best ones, do get into uber reaches. Of course. BUT not based solely on that QM prototype. Not. And they get in from the other 49 states, as well.
And a lot of bright, accomplished kids from the Bay area or the other 49 states do not.
@theloniusmonk You’ve got to know I don’t agree with everything about athletic recruiting. Let’s skip them.
But to boldly state, “Well they definitely guess if they’re reading [a] development admit. These essays just have to be basic (no spelling or grammatical errors) and they’re in…” is baloney.
“Wouldn’t it make more sense to be a bottom academic kid, you know an alphabet-soup transcript like mine, surely I’d be competing with only a handful of other kids and not all those pesky 1500/1600 applicants.”
I think you’re kidding but will bite.
Nope. You have to know the “competition” isn’t just for an admit; it also refers to the four years there.
Are you a hs kid?
To try to put this thread back on track: it’s assumptions like these that hamper a kid’s chances.
Not all development admits are created equal. If they were, every child of a billionaire would be at Harvard, Yale or similar. And they are not. The children of mega wealth distribute across the food chain (just like everyone else). SMU, Denison, Lehigh, Trinity, Lake Forest, for one crowd; NYU, BU, GW for another (particularly rich kids who don’t want to give up urban partying/lifestyle), Bennington, Bard, Oberlin, Wesleyan for the artsier crowd.
You think these kids guidance counselors have never heard of Princeton or Dartmouth? Even when these kids are double legacies at some of these schools, the prep school GC’s will not risk their own reputations by encouraging the “don’t have the goods” development kids to apply to schools where even if by a miracle the kid could get in, the kid likely can’t keep up. Much better for everyone for a kid to be the star at Lake Forest than a washout at U Chicago.
Patently false that all these kids need to do is have an essay which has been proof read for spelling errors. The entire freshman class at one of the uber elites would be comprised of the uber wealthy children if that were true.
I think QM’s point is that there could/should be a distinction drawn between top 0.1% (or less) kids and top 1% kids in terms of being essentially auto-admits at tippy top colleges. Maybe that is measured by perfect SAT scores or a combination of criteria, though in reality it is impossible to identify them precisely.
On the other hand, US standard testing is very bad at finding extreme outliers, you have to look to other things (like the Mathematical Olympiad) to find that. It seems very likely that a top 1% kid with good prep will do better than a top 0.1% kid with average prep on the SAT/ACT. And 5s on APs tell you very little about those 0.1% vs 1% kids.
Regardless, even if the top 0.1% could be identified, that would be about 5000 kids per year in the US. So none of the tippy top colleges would be able to offer admission to all of them (and they don’t really aim to anyway). Contrast that with the UK, where the top 0.1% (1000 kids per year) can certainly write their ticket to Oxbridge. In fact Oxbridge interviews and tests are precisely calibrated to identify top 0.1% kids, and do it pretty well.
But these super elite US holistic colleges are not going on rack-and-stack. These colleges aren’t auto admitting based on transcript and scores. No matter how much any one of us thinks some kids should get to bypass the full admissions process, it isn’t so (well except maybe athletes, at some colleges.)
Holistic admissions are a “test” too, just one that looks for different things. You have to be able to write something insightful enough to catch an adcoms’ attention (a test of breadth more than depth, especially for STEM kids) and have good enough ECs and leadership positions to complement your academic stats (a test of time management i.e. that you can devote lots of time to one or more ECs while keeping on top of your studies, combined with a test of your social capital/influencing skills).
Essentially the US system as a whole favors breadth over depth. But because these are qualitative not quantitative tests, and adjusted for other factors (hooks) the outcome is less predictable.
That is still the case after college too. It’s often painfully apparent when interviewing new graduates on opposite sides of the Atlantic. But one is not better than the other, just optimized for different outcomes. And a tippy top academically selected student at Oxbridge will usually have some breadth, while a tippy top holistically selected student at Stanford will usually have some depth. Though I have seen exceptions on both counts.
Yes, but, if the unknown factor is truly immeasurable then a holistic approach is the only rational response. For every Einstein who tests well, there’s an Obama who probably didn’t (at least, reportedly, not well enough to get into Swarthmore.)
“Yes, but, if the unknown factor is truly immeasurable then a holistic approach is the only rational response.”
No another rational response is to shortlist and then have the professors interview them (not a bunch of random alumni) to find the kids who truly wow you. That’s what happens for top scholarships (and when recruiting for employees), it could be done by tippy top schools if they really wanted to.